• May Day in Mexico City
Demonstrations led by the dissident Foro group of unions and the radical Intersindical Primero de Mayo, converged to fill the national plaza (Zocalo) of Mexico City on May 1st. Carrying hundreds of banners and thousands of placards, chanting slogans and singing protest songs, more than 100,000 workers, peasants, and urban poor demanded a change in the government's neo-liberal economic policies.
Last year, when the Congress of Labor (CT) and the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) decided to cancel the official May Day demonstration, independent unions and peasant leagues, community groups, members of the democratic citizens' movements, and opposition political organizations held the first genuinely independent May Day celebration in Mexico in decades. Hastily organized and largely a grass-roots affair, May Day 1995 had the feel of a radical social movement calling both for political democracy and economic change.
This year, for the first time, the dissident union officials of the Foro group and May First Coalition seized the initiative.
Much smaller than the Foro group, the independent Inter-sindical Primero de Mayo (May First Inter-Union Coalltion) grew out of the May Day 1995 demonstration. At the center of the May First Coalition is the Route 100 bus drivers union (SUTAUR) with something like 9,000 active members led by Ricardo Braco, the union's attorney who is currently in jail on charges of embezzlement. In 1995 as part of the Mexican government's privatization of state-owned industries, the Federal District, declared Route 100 bankrupt and laid off the 12,000 workers, also eliminating their independent labor union (SUTAUR). Many unions and other organizations rallied to the support of SUTAUR, and together participated in May Day 1995, after which they joined together to form the May First Coalition. The Frente Popular Francisco Villa turned out thousands of the urban poor, including hundreds of housewives from poor neighborhoods. Supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and its new organization the
Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) turned out to march with the
May First Coalition.
Authentic Labor Front (FAT) leader
Alfredo Dominguez read a statement from Subcomandante Marcos of the
International Viewpoint 15
In all the countries where such possibilities exist, the organisations Lean Production: a capitalist Utopia?
of the Fourth International are ready to be part of the re-groupment Tony Smith process. We consider this as an important step towards the 24/25. IMF/World Bank/WTO: The Free Market recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world scale. At the international level, the Fourth International is an active participant
Eric Toussaint (editor)
in re-groupment, bringing with it the advantages of a long tradition
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* Brazil EZLN calling for workers, peasants, and the indigenous people to join together to march against the government's neoliberal economic policies. Meanwhile, In Chiapas, 200 EZLN supporters seized a local radio station and broadcast a message from Subcomandante Marcos in Spanish, Tzeltal and Tzotzil calling for unity of workers, peasants and indigenous peoples against neo-liberalism and for the construction of a new Mexico.
The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) marched with the May First independents, and its best known
Association of the Transformation Industry Renovation?
May Day 1996 demonstrated both the widespread working class opposition to the Mexican government's economic and social policies, and the increasing divisions within the official labor movement. Many commentators characterized the event as a "watershed" or "turning point" in the modern history of the Mexican union move-
CTM leadership, but also the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. This would mean massive strikes, civil disobedience, and more forceful confrontations with the authorities on a regional or national scale. But the Mexican working class remains cautious. And quiet; strikes are at an all time low. * Source: Mexican Labor News and Analysis, e-mail: <103144.2651@compuserve.com>
Red Box Mail Order public figure, former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas spoke at
1 The Place of Marxism in History the rally in the Zocalo calling for unity
Ernest Mandel between the May First and Foro forces.
The Chinese Revolution (Part One)
Cardenas also called for the creation of
Pierre Rousset committees for the defense of the petro-
The Chinese Revolution (Part Two chemical industry.
Pierre Rousset
One interesting development in the
Revolutionary Strategy Today
May Day demonstration this year was
Daniel Bensaïd the presence of
Class Struggle and Technological Change in two business groups, El Barzon, the
Japan since 1945 organization of indebted farmers and
Muto Ichiyo businesspeople, and the National
[Out of Print] Populism in Latin America (A. Gilly)
Market, Plan and Democracy: The Experience of the so-called Socialist Countries
Mutation and regroupment
Catherine Samary
The Formative Years of the Fourth
International
The collapse of Stalinism and the
Daniel Bensaïd continuing capitalist crisis has
Marxism and Liberation Theology contradictory effects. Myths and
Michael Löwy illusions connected to the res-
11/12. The Bourgeois Revolutions toration of capitalism in the post-
Robert Lochhead
Stalinist societies have dis-
13. The Spanish Civil War in Euskadi and sipated, faced with the actually
Catalonia 1936-39 existing market economy. But
Miguel Romero reactions to the socio-econ-
The Gulf War & the New World Order omic crisis all too often take
André Gunder Frank and Saleh Jaber the form of reactionary ten-
Italy: From the PC to the PDS dencies of an ethnic, nation-
Livio Maitan alist, racial or religious char-
Do the Workers have a Country?
acter. Hence the urgent
José Iriarte "Bikila"
need to rebuild a world-wide
17/18. October 1917: Coup d'état or Social movement of anti-capitalist
Revolution?
struggle, taking account of the recomposition of the workers' move-
Ernest Mandel
19/20. The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia ment which is underway as a result of the double tailure
Catherine Samary of social democracy and Stalinism.
Factory Committees and Workers' control in
Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the
Petrograd in 1917 historical abomination that was Stalinism and to continue, against
David Mandel the winds and the tides, to fight against capitalism are being
Women's Lives in the New Global Economy realised in a number of countries.
P. Duggan & H. Dashner (editors)
of combat against capitalism and Stalinism.
But hopes of renovation are probably premature. Given the crucial relationship between Mexico's unions and the state, true reno-
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the labor movement would necessitate union partici- 4.
pation in a broader democratic movement which would bring down not only the CT and
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Fiasco
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